Why I Quit Planning My Homeschool Year

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a perfectionist to a fault. This has led to more than a few planning disasters. For me, I love to sit with my planners (yes, more than one) and fill them up with all of my hopes, all of my dreams, and all of my plans. The problem here is that I tend to over plan. To plan for each and every second of the day. With four kids, multiple extra-curricular activities, and working from home this tends to lead to a lot of days that don’t go smoothly. I’ve learned over the years that failing to plan for anything is disastrous. Missed appointments, always running late, and completing more than a few tasks at the last minute proved that. However, overplanning, the need to perfectly line up my days within neat boxes of rigidly planned days, proved to be equally detrimental.

[bctt tweet=”However, overplanning, the need to perfectly line up my days within neat boxes of rigidly planned days, proved to be equally detrimental.” username=”hopeinthechaos”]

Unwilling to simply give up, I decided to try something different. In fact, last school year, I tried something drastic. Something that made me quite nervous actually and terrified we were going to fail. Yet, this was something I really wanted I try.

Last year, I didn’t plan out my school year.

Learning From Past Mistakes

I can remember our first full year of homeschooling. Weeks before our official first day I sat at the kitchen table with everything. All of the curriculum. All of the binders. And all of my plans. I dutifully filled binders with the materials the kids would need to succeed and made notes of anything we might need to still pick up.

I also went through each and every curriculum we were using and looked at their suggested schedules. Curriculum companies are great about helping you lay out your homeschool day in a nice, orderly fashion. They block out time for everything from math to health, Language Arts to fine arts. The daily schedules in them are so perfect and I really wanted to recreate them.

So, logically, I broke up every one of our curriculums based on the companies recommendations and our state required 175-day school year. I filled up each and every school day with all of the subjects and created a looping-style schedule for things like health, phys. ed, and art.

And after a few nights, I had everything planned perfectly. Our entire school year was mapped out to perfection including test dates, school vacations, and our final school day.

Failing To Plan…

Now, if you are a veteran homeschoolert, at this point you can probably already tell me the end of this story…. utter failure. As much as I planned, and as prepared as I thought I was, I failed to plan for the biggest thing in homeschooling – the unknown. I never planned for a field trip, a sick day, a lesson that the kids didn’t understand. I failed to think about taking random days off, doctors appointments, and the rest of life. I planned our homeschool year so rigidly that by the end of it we were all miserable.

Sure, we finished up by day 175. And yeah, the kids passed the tests. But the reality was we simply crammed as much learning into them as we could that our days were hectic, our days were busy, and our days were awful. I knew I didn’t want to do that again, but as a planner, I felt the need to plan. I felt the need to validate our time and our days to ourselves and to others.

More then anything though, I felt this pressure to prove that we could do this and that we were homeschooling well. I was still in a public school mentality and it was hurting us all.

Making Changes

Then one year I decided to try something different. Instead of planning out our year, we were simply going to “do school.” Math, history, science, Language Arts, and all the extras were going to happen but we were also going to let life happen as well. We were going to aim for a set number of lessons per week, but more then that, we were going to aim for learning. For increasing their understanding of the subjects they were learning. If a science section that the creator said should take 10 days took us 15, we weren’t going to fret. And if we zipped through the history lessons faster, we were going to go with it. Instead of using my planner as a planner I was going to use it a record what we had done. In essence, I was going to flip the planner and make it work for us.

In theory, I felt that this system would work better. I thought this system would allow us to homeschool more naturally. However, old habits die hard and I quickly found myself falling back into that old routine. I found myself looking at the number of lessons we had completed and comparing it to the number of school days we had completed. I may have been attempting to homeschool in a more relaxed manner, but I was failing miserably. Sure, I didn’t have a calendar telling me that we should be on lesson 95, but I knew it none-the-less and was pressuring all of us to catch up.

A Big Gamble

Then one day I decided I was done. I was done trying to compare myself and my children to others. I was done thinking the kids or I need to prove anything to anyone. Done making homeschool a tiresome and stressful project. I was done with traditional homeschool planners that drove me to over-plan and fret over planned tasks that didn’t happen.

Instead, we were going to wing it. Literally. We set an official start date and just did school. We made learning the priority, not school. Learning was our goal instead of completed pages in a workbook.

At first, I was worried. Worried that it wouldn’t work, that we were wasting time and I was going to have to make it up. Concerned that without a plan we were going to let life and all the other tasks we have take priority and find that a month in we were seriously behind.

However, it was at this time that I also started thinking about the true goal of homeschooling. Well, our goal anyway. Our goal has nothing to do with filling up notebooks with notes, finishing up math curriculum, or even acing tests. Our goal is centered around educating our children, fostering a love of learning, and encouraging the kids to follow their dreams. Yes, math books and science tests are a big part of that education, but as is being polite, kind, and helpful. Fostering a love of learning is hard to do when mandatory or required learning is being forced upon them. And it’s really hard to follow their own dreams when Mommy has scheduled history at the same time your dream starts to come into focus.

Knowing our goal for homeschool I set out to make it more than just a statement – I set out to make it a reality. To make our school days focus around these three elements and weigh our direction based on them.

Where Does That Leave Us Now?

[bctt tweet=”We now know that our school year is so much better when we just let it happen, naturally.” username=”hopeinthechaos”]

I wouldn’t go so far as to say we are unschoolers, but we are more relaxed. Our first year with an unplanned school year, however, was a successful one. We still had curriculum we were using, but even that changed as the year progressed and new opportunities were found. We still worked on what I call the basics every week (math, science, history, and Language Arts) but we also made sure opportunities were presented that allowed for interest-based learning.

Our first unplanned school year was also technically our longest year, but we also took a 2-month break in the Spring. It also led us to school through this past summer to finish up some things that were important. Currently, we are in the midst of a couple of weeks off as the kids and I each take some time to end last year and transition into next year. It’s a good mental break that allows the kids to really chase their dreams and finish up some personal projects they have all been working on.

We’ve talked a lot this summer about the upcoming school year. We’ve considered what our goals are and looked into how we can make them all work. This year I will be officially schooling all four kids, including one high schooler. Yet, instead of sitting here as in years past stressing over scope and sequence pages and meticulously planning how to juggle four students, extra-curricular activities, and the plethora of other items on my to-do list, I am instead thinking about what amazing books we may want to read this year. Contemplating both read alouds and independent reading, as well as books that will supplement both history and science.

I’m thinking about looping activities and what I want in our morning basket this year. Items both previously abandoned that I so want to reintroduce and include this year. I am wondering if my son is going to finish the fort that he has been working on and if my daughter is going to master the sewing project she has taken on.

More importantly though, I’m thinking about all the things my kids learned last year that weren’t on the scope and sequences. The recommendations I previously tried so diligently to follow thinking it was the best course for us.

The old saying, “If you fail to plan you plan to fail” still holds true… however, I have learned that you can still fail remarkably well even with a well-laid out plan. This realization has led us to the reality that our school year is so much better when we just let it happen. When we surround ourselves with the tools we need for success and the freedom to chase it.